


who is that boy?

by beforeallthis



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Gen - The Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:10:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5435900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforeallthis/pseuds/beforeallthis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Outsider does not remember. He simply knows, as a god would. But, perhaps he would like to remember just how all this came to be. How he came to be. But he cannot. </p><p>// A take on who the Outsider was before becoming the Outsider (kind of.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	who is that boy?

**Author's Note:**

> I rewrote this fic here in an attempt to make it less clunky at parts. I don't know if I've succeeded, but there. I did it. (http://vnprofessional.tumblr.com/post/146235360246/who-is-that-boy)

The Outsider remembers nothing of  _then,_  a point in time which constitutes being _back_ _then,_ but he cannot completely forget that there was a  _back then - back then_ where there was a boy. A confused boy who he now finds locked behind his rib-cage. And he just won't stop pulling at each holy rib and banging against his confines. The Outsider does not remember keeping him prisoner or capturing him, but he keeps him anyway. When he talks to his disciples, his Marked, he smiles and smirks while they try to find the end to his black eyes. He finds it amusing, yes, but _he_ knows what is at the end.

At the end of his Void eyes - and if they were to look closely and properly, they would see that they are not entirely voided and endless - is this confused boy. And he has not stopped crying and yelling for a few thousand years now (the Outsider knows the number even though he has not been keeping count, _since when?_ he will never ask).

And he'll look on at his Marked; Daud, old as he is now, is the most impatient. The Void and the Outsider have taken their toll on him and sometimes the Outsider knows that Daud would do anything to be done with his gifts and "his trickster's games". It has been maybe a whole year since Daud actually looked him in his black eyes.

Delilah liked to touch the Outsider, trace his features and prod him in the most human way and he does not terribly mind it - she did not worship him for anything other than her powers and perhaps her artistic fascinations - even in her dying minutes he heard her whispering for a holy touch, some sort of resurrection. But not even she had time to properly think about what lay in the marrow of this god's bones, only when she could topple Daud from leadership for a whimsy and her pure enjoyment at the thought of Daud at his knees.

Now, Corvo - not even the Outsider can read him - Corvo, Lord Protector, haunted by the images of his dead Empress, scoured the streets day and night in search for his missing, kidnapped daughter only to stand mute in front of the Outsider with a weight as heavy as the Void on each shoulder. He does not complain.  _Y_ _ou fascinate me, Corvo._ It rings as heavily in Corvo's ears as it does drop through the Outsider's very physical form. _  
_

Occasionally, Corvo spoke, to the Outsider's delight. He could easily know what he was thinking but there is much more weight to it when Corvo deemed a question important enough to disturb the silence of the Void with it. At other times, the Outsider found him in the corners of flats and old shacks and wrapped bodies reading journals and books the Overseers had not yet burned with the witches they held every night. The Outsider wishes that Corvo would tell him about what he reads, and whether he finds anything about the boy. One time, the Outsider falters and stops talking when he notices how Corvo is looking at him,  _into him - d_ _o you see the boy? Do you see him? -_ before Corvo leaves the Void in pursuit of young lady Emily for another night. And the boy wails for yet another night. Another eternity in the Void. _  
_

The Outsider cannot hear him but he knows that he is crying, screaming with all the might he can muster in his brittle bones. He doesn't scream for anyone, not his mother or his father, wherever,  _whoever_ they may be, but he does not give in. His relentless screech, silent it may seem, still echoes through the walls of this god who does not know how he got here and who brought him here, or who this boy is, only that he is here, locked in his chest.

If anyone knew better, and Corvo knew better, they'd know that he wants out - but outside of his cage, it is only quieter in the Void. Beyond the Void and its keeper with a boy trapped in his heart is only the plague and death and stakes and fire and heresy and the dead Empress and the missing Empress and an innocent man turned fugitive looking for a sign - a sign which he found in this deep, endless, deathly silent Void and its Leviathan - a god who is not a God and is not immortal and there will come a time when all the lights of the city will be consumed by the Void and all the whales will disappear and so will the Outsider and so will the little boy.  _Outsider's eyes. What is that?_

_Mother, who is that boy?_


End file.
